Cf )t  ILorb’s  draper  as  a 
j^tssionarp  document 

Sp 

Rev.  Joseph  Henry  Odell 


The  Board  of  Foreign  Missions 

of  the 

Presbyterian  Chuch  in  the  U.  S.  A. 
156  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven;  Hallowed 
be  Thy  Name;  Thy  kingdom  come;  Thy  will 
be  done  in  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven ;  Give  us 
this  day  our  daily  bread;  And  forgive  us  our 
debts,  as  we  forgave  our  debtors ;  And  lead  us 
not  into  temptation  but  deliver  us  from  evil ; 
For  Thine  is  the  kingdom,  and  the  power, 
and  the  glory,  for  ever.  Amen. — 

Matthew  vi :  9-13. 

WITH  a  smug  self-satisfaction  which  is 
surely  the  most  incomprehensible 
mood  of  modern  Christendom,  the 
Lord’s  Prayer  is  offered  daily  by  millions 
who  are  oblivious  of  its  real  meaning.  It 
has  been  assumed,  by  tacit  agreement,  that 
this  prayer  may  be  used  by  people  who  can¬ 
not  frame  any  other  petition,  as  though  it 
were  the  neutral  ground  of  religion  upon 
which  all  kinds  and  conditions  of  men  may 
stand  without  danger  of  spiritual  commit¬ 
ment.  By  common  consent  we  treat  it  as 
the  irreducible  minimum  of  worship;  it  has 
even  become  the  official  counter  which 
passes  current  for  prayer  in  political  and 
commercial  conventions;  it  does  social  ser¬ 
vice  upon  occasions  when  anything  sup¬ 
posed  to  be  definite  or  dogmatic  would  be 
in  bad  form.  Thus  our  Lord’s  Prayer  may 
be  said  to  have  become  thoroughly  steril¬ 
ized  and  devitalized. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  is  a  pity  to 
take  away  from  the  public  such  an  article  of 
general  convenience,  but  it  is  a  duty  that 
we  should  restore  this  one  authorized  form 


of  worship  to  its  original  purpose.  For,  in¬ 
stead  of  being  the  minimum,  it  is  the  very 
maximum  of  prayer;  rather  than  a  pale  sub¬ 
stitute  for  a  pronounced  spiritual  attitude,  it 
is  the  most  positive,  virile  and  dynamical 
utterance  that  can  possibly  fall  from  human 
lips.  Therefore,  if  we  can  pour  back  into 
its  depleted  veins  what  Christ  had  in  His 
mind  and  heart  when  He  gave  it  to  the  dis¬ 
ciples,  we  shall  be  doing  nothing  more  than 
starting  again  at  the  beginning,  tracing  the 
head-waters  of  the  river  of  life  to  their 
source. 

Nothing  seems  more  certain  to  me  than 
that  the  Lord’s  Prayer  contains  Christ’s 
complete  purpose  for  the  redemption  of  the 
entire  world — the  motive,  program,  method 
and  goal  of  what  we  call  either  Home  or 
Foreign  Missions  can  be  found  in  its  vari¬ 
ous  clauses  and  stamped  upon  its  entire 
structure.  Everything  aggressive  and  pro¬ 
gressive  in  Christianity  is  involved  when  it 
is  properly  recited.  If  this  thrilling  and  ro¬ 
mantic  spirit  fails  to  touch  us  the  reason 
will  be  found  in  the  fact  that  we  have  un¬ 
consciously  acceded  to  the  conventional  use 
of  the  prayer,  we  have  become  the  unwil¬ 
ling  victims  of  a  familiarity  which  needs  to 
be  broken  in  upon  by  an  interpretation 
taken  from  the  mind  and  character  and  sac¬ 
rifice  of  the  Master  Himself. 

Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven!  That 
little  pronoun  “our”  is  more  than  compre¬ 
hensive,  it  is  all-inclusive.  I  do  not  see 
where  you  can  drive  a  single  stake  to  mark 
a  boundary.  Truly  it  implies  possession, 


has  an  intimate  accent,  affiliates  the  indi¬ 
vidual  beyond  a  doubt;  but  it  does  these 
things  universally.  If  there  linger  in  your 
mind  anything  like  racial  prejudice,  it  may 
startle  you  to  be  reminded  that  the  Semitic 
people  by  whom  the  word  was  first  heard 
are  farther  removed  from  our  Anglo-Saxon 
type  than  are  the  Aryans  of  Northern  India. 
There  are  many  races  with  whose  blood 
ours  will  mingle  more  freely  than  with  the 
Hebrew.  Science  ought  to  have  made  this 
finessing  on  features  utterly  impossible,  but 
science  makes  slight  headway  against  preju¬ 
dice.  However,  if  I  am  in  need  of  a  Com¬ 
mentary  upon  this  initial  word,  I  prefer  to 
trust  myself  to  that  vision  of  the  consum¬ 
mation  of  Christ’s  kingdom  found  in  the 
Apocalypse,  rather  than  to  the  conclusions 
of  anthropology  or  comparative  anatomy: 
“After  this  I  beheld,  and  lo,  a  great  multi¬ 
tude  which  no  man  could  number,  of  all  na¬ 
tions,  and  kindreds,  and  people,  and  tongues, 
stood  before  the  throne,  and  before  the 
Lamb,  clothed  with  white  robes,  and  palms 
in  their  hands;  and  cried  with  a  loud  Voice, 
saying,  Salvation  to  our  God  which  sitteth 
upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb.”  No 
one  can  truly  say,  “Our  Father”  who  con¬ 
sciously  isolates  himself  from  the  rest  of  the 
race.  We  are  bound  to  all  humanity  the 
moment  we  bend  our  knees  in  prayer. 

Our  Father  which  art  in  Heaven!  The  God 
with  the  geographical  habitat  is  gone. 
Bethel,  Jerusalem,  Benares,  Mt.  Olympus, 
Mecca,  hold  the  eye  and  draw  the  feet  no 
more.  The  Maori  in  New  Zealand  is  as 

4 


close  to  God  as  the  minister  in  New  York. 
Heaven  is  equi-near  to  every  soul  that  feels 
an  aspiration  or  cherishes  a  sacred  hope. 
The  heresy  of  special  privilege  has  surrepti¬ 
tiously  fastened  upon  the  consciousness  of 
Western  Christians,  blinding  their  vision 
and  blighting  their  faith.  And  it  will  re¬ 
main  with  its  curse  until  we  rediscover  the 
universal  significance  of  these  memory- 
dulled  phrases.  Even  a  millennium  before 
Christ  some  men  realized  this  truth  better 
than  many  of  us:  “Whither  shall  I  go  from 
Th}r  Spirit?  or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  Thy 
presence?  If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  Thou 
art  there;  if  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold 
Thou  art  there;  if  I  take  the  wings  of  the 
morning  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  sea,  even  there  shall  Thy  hand  lead  me, 
and  Thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me.”  Our 
Father  which  art  in  heaven; 

Hallowed  be  Thy  Name! 

What  name?  Father!  Just  to  hedge  the 
Almighty  against  verbal  irreverence  is  a 
very  narrow  and  shallow  interpretation. 
Hallowed  be  the  name  of  “Father,”  for  it 
means  everything  our  poor  disinherited  and 
disendowed  humanity  can  need  or  crave. 
Read  into  it  all  the  best  that  natural  pater¬ 
nity  illustrates  and  you  have  a  large  content 
to  the  word — -the  giving  of  life,  protection, 
guidance  and  an  instinctive  affection.  But 
read  it  through  the  life  of  Christ  and  you 
have  a  wealth  of  loving  solicitude  and  wise 
governance  quite  inexhaustible.  And  yet, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  I  think  the  wonder 
and  glory  of  the  name  must  be  found  in  its 


correlative — in  the  sonship  of  man.  As  the 
sons  of  God,  made  in  His  image,  we  can 
safely  leave  the  accidentals  and  incidentals 
out  of  account.  Man’s  height  in  feet  and 
inches,  the  cranial  contour,  the  hue  of  the 
skin,  the  cast  of  the  features,  have  nothing 
to  do  with  personality,  and  personality  is 
the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  mankind. 
Personality  is  made  up  of  three  interacting 
things; — thoughts,  emotions  and  volitions. 
Wherever  these  three — the  power  to  think, 
to  feel,  to  will — -co-exist  and  co-operate, 
there  is  kinship.  They  are  the  essential 
qualities  that  knit  the  whole  human  family 
into  a  brotherhood  with  a  common  ancestry. 
A  Dyak  or  a  Patagonian  is  our  brother  by 
right  of  birth;  there  is  one  God  and  Father 
of  all;  Hallowed  be  Thy  name.  No  deeper 
degradation  can  be  put  upon  the  Divine 
Fatherhood  than  to  disallow  the  right  of 
some  of  His  children  to  participate  in  the 
shelter,  food  and  joy  of  the  Father’s  home. 
We  cannot  disinherit  one  of  His  sons  with¬ 
out  cutting  away  our  own  kindred  rights 
and  privileges. 

Thy  Kingdom  Come! 

Christ’s  teaching  may  be  grouped  under 
two  main  divisions:  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
and  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  established  on 
earth.  Christ’s  conception  of  the  Kingdom 
was  infinitely  greater  and  grander  than  our 
thought  of  the  Church.  I  believe  it  com¬ 
prehended  not  simply  redeemed  lives,  but 
a  human  society  controlled  and  guided  by 
the  will  of  God.  The  Church  is  an  organi¬ 
zation  of  Christian  men  and  women  gov- 

6 


erned  by  certain  definite  rules;  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  is  composed  of  all  people,  socie¬ 
ties,  institutions  and  influences  that  inter¬ 
pret  the  will  of  God  on  earth.  So  in  this 
prayer  the  Master  looks  for  more  than  the 
salvation  of  individuals;  He  craves  the  per¬ 
meation  and  subjugation  of  every  human 
relationship  and  enterprise  by  the  spirit  of 
God.  It  is  not  enough  to  build  up  little 
churches  in  India,  Africa,  China,  Europe; 
the  law  of  the  heavenly  life  is  to  conquer 
and  control  the  legislation,  social  customs, 
art,  commerce,  politics  of  these  various 
lands.  The  Kingdom  of  God  will  have  fully 
come  only  when  every  thought  and  activity 
of  mankind  is  in  harmony  with  the  Divine 
mind. 

I  know  of  no  better  illustration  of  how  the 
Kingdom  is  coming  than  the  words  of 
Count  Okuma,  one  of  the  founders  of  New 
Japan  and  at  one  time  Prime  Minister: 
“Although  Christianity  has  enrolled  less 
than  200,000  believers,  yet  the  indirect  influ¬ 
ence  of  Christianity  has  poured  into  every 
realm  of  Japanese  life.  It  has  been  borne 
to  us  on  all  the  currents  of  European  civili¬ 
zation;  most  of  all,  the  English  language 
and  literature,  so  surcharged  with  Christian 
ideas,  has  exerted  a  wide  and  deep  influence 
over  Japanese  thought. 

Christianity  has  affected  us  not  only  in 
such  superficial  ways  as  the  legal  observ¬ 
ance  of  Sunday,  but  also  in  our  ideals  con¬ 
cerning  political  institutions,  the  family,  and 
woman’s  station.  '.  .  .  Not  a  few  ideals 

in  Japan  which  are  supposed  to  have  been 


derived  from  Chinese  literature  are  in  real¬ 
ity  due  to  European  literature.  The  Chinese 
influence  may  still  supply  the  forms,  but  the 
soul  has  come  from  Christianity.”* 

Thy  Will  be  done  in  earth 
as  it  is  in  heaven. 

This  is  the  way  in  which  the  Kingdom 
comes.  But  the  clause  has  an  unfortunate 
grammatical  cast  which  has  given  rise  to 
the  impression  that  man’s  relation  to  the 
will  of  God  is  an  attitude  of  passivity.  God’s 
will  is  not  alone  something  to  be  borne,  an 
unappealable  and  unrepeatable  decision  to 
be  accepted  with  resignation.  God’s  will  is 
not  simply  a  divine  judgment  passed  upon 
us,  but  a  divine  program  to  be  worked  out 
by  us.  We  discover  it,  adopt  it,  embody  it. 
in  thought  and  word  and  deed;  we  translate 
it  into  ideals,  and  customs,  and  laws,  and 
institutions;  we  transmute  it  into  tempera¬ 
ment  and  character;  we  make  its  articula¬ 
tion  the  ruling  passion  of  our  lives.  And 
we  do  all  these  things  not  only  as  indi¬ 
viduals,  but  as  citizens,  as  societies,  as 
municipalities,  as  nations. 

Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread. 

At  first  blush  this  is  a  descent.  We  seem 
to  have  dropped  from  the  universal  to  the 
particular,  from  the  spiritual  to  the  tem¬ 
poral.  But  such  is  only  a  superficial  verdict. 
An  easy  interpretation  is  to  the  effect  that 
we  need  physical  strength  for  physical 

*  “A  Japanese  Stateman’s  view  of  Christianity 
in  Japan.  A  statement  by  Count  Okurna” — The 
International  Review  of  Missions,  October,  1912. 

S 


tasks.  That  is  true.  The  doing  of  the  will 
of  God  on  earth  is  such  a  tremendous  task 
that  we  must  always  be  in  the  best  of  con¬ 
dition  to  accomplish  it.  But  I  think  we  can 
get  onto  a  higher  plane  even  than  that. 
God’s  purpose  in  the  establishment  of  His 
Kingdom  comprehends  the  whole  life  of 
man.  It  is  to  be  a  kingdom  on  earth,  amid 
ideal  conditions  becoming  actual,  in  which 
all  His  children  are  to  share  to  the  utmost 
of  their  capacity.  Christ  healed  the  sick 
and  fed  the  hungry;  that  is,  He  removed 
temporary  disabilities  and  liberated  men 
for  a  realization  of  the  full  meaning  of  life. 
The  program  of  modern  missions  is  strictly 
consonant  with  His  example;  industrial, 
medical,  educational  missions  are  the  logical 
application  of  His  spirit.  Men  must  have 
the  means  of  livelihood  as  a  prerequisite  to 
living. 

And  notice  the  pronouns  again :  Give  us  this 
day  our  daily  bread !  The  prayer  is  as  far 
removed  from  individualistic  selfishness  as 
can  be  imagined.  To  offer  it  and  then  pro¬ 
ceed  to  grasp  a  superfluous  amount  of 
earth’s  resources  to  the  exclusion  of  our 
brother  men  is  the  hollowest  mockery.  No 
one  can  utter  such  words  sincere^  without 
including  the  Indian  and  Chinese  famine 
victims  in  his  budget.  It  is  socialism  sub¬ 
limated,  sanctified,  glorified. 

And  forgive  us  our  debts  as 
zoe  forgive  our  debtors. 

This  seems  to  imply  that  the  Kingdom  is 
at  least  partially  established;  that  the  peti- 

9 


tioners  have  already  reached  the  level  on 
which  they  have  conquered  their  animosi¬ 
ties;  that  they  have  established  a  happy  re¬ 
lationship  of  anlity  and  love  toward  all  men. 
But  very  few  of  us  will  dare  to  claim  so 
much.  Does  it  not  rather  mean  that  we 
seek  pardon  for  our  sms  of  omission? 
Doubtless  our  lives  would  be  much  richer 
and  stronger  than  they  are  if  others  had 
done  their  duty  to  us.  Let  us  forgive  and 
forget  what  might  have  been.  But  can  we 
forgive  ourselves?  Have  not  we  eaten  our 
morsel  alone,  have  not  we  allowed  truth  to 
lie  dormant  in  our  minds  which  should  have 
been  distributed,  have  not  we  accepted  and 
appropriated  for  our  use  alone  the  love 
which  we  should  have  transformed  into  the 
energy  of  service?  St.  Paul  said  he  was 
“debtor  both  to  the  Greeks  and  to  the  Bar¬ 
barians;  both  to  the  wise  and  to  the  unwise” 
— not  because  he  was  their  beneficiary,  but 
because  God  had  made  him  a  trustee  of 
truth  on  their  behalf.  And  almost  the  en¬ 
tire  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  concerning  the 
Judgment  is  to  the  effect  that  culpability 
lies  in  neglected  duty  and  unseized  oppor¬ 
tunity.  To  be  forgiven  for  such  omissions 
we  must  pray;  but  our  prayer  must  hold  a 
resolution  and  a  consecration  for  the  future. 
The  Hindus,  the  Japanese,  the  denizens  of 
South  America,  with  a  hundred  other  races, 
have  been  and  still  are  our  spiritual  wards. 
If  we  have  defaulted  and  defrauded  them  in 
days  gone  by  because  we  have  not  appre¬ 
ciated  our  stewardship,  we  must  seek  par¬ 
don  along  the  lowly  path  of  penitence,  and 

10 


in  the  future  we  are  pledged  to  be  true  to 
our  trust. 

And  lead  us  not  into  temptation, 
but  deliver  us  from  evil! 

Remember,  Christ  is  speaking  to  such  as 
are  already  children  of  the  Kingdom,  or  at 
least  candidates  for  the  Kingdom.  We  may 
assume  that  He  had  in  mind  not  the  gross 
sins  of  the  flesh — drunkenness,  sensuality, 
theft  and  murder — but  the  subtler  sins  of 
the  spirit — the  temptations  of  temperament 
calling,  the  perils  that  lie  hidden  within  the 
very  dispositions  that  shine  brightest  in  the 
Christian  life.  The  highest  places  in  the 
Kingdom  might  be  sought  for  unworthy 
reasons.  The  consciousness  of  virtue  at¬ 
tained  might  create  the  vice  of  censorious¬ 
ness — the  temper  of  the  elder  brother.  Zeal 
for  the  Master  might  use  a  devilish  means 
to  attain  a  godly  end — calling  down  fire 
from  heaven  upon'  the  thoughtless  Samari¬ 
tans.  Pride  of  nationality  and  the  privilege 
of  exceptional  spiritual  heritage  might  lead 
to  bigotry — as  in  the  case  of  the  Jewish 
disciples  who  would  not  eat  with  the  Chris¬ 
tianized  Gentiles.  These  are  a  few  of  the 
temptations,  some  of  the  wiles  of  the  evil 
one,  set  to  ambush  and  overthrow  even  the 
best  of  men.  Have  not  we  reason  to  pray 
for  deliverance  from  similar  perils?  Far  too 
many  who  sincerely  love  and  reverence  the 
Master  to-day  are  victims  of  just  such 
moods  and  deductions.  The  supercilious 
air  we  assume  toward  the  people  of  the  back¬ 
ward  nations,  the  inference  that  God  in  His 
Mercy  will  take  care  of  the  unsought  and 

ll 


untaught  even  if  we  neglect  them,  the  con¬ 
centration  of  interest  upon  our  own  affairs 
as  if  we  alone  were  of  value  in  the  eyes  of 
the  Heavenly  Father,  the  cynical  conclu¬ 
sion  that  the  half-lights  and  distorted  truths 
of  other  religions  are  best  adapted  to  the 
multitudes  who  hold  them  because  they 
have  known  none  other — -these  and  many 
similar  attitudes  of  mind  and  spirit  are  al¬ 
ways  endangering  our  faith.  No  state  of 
Christian  experience,  however  elevated  and 
triumphant,  can  grant  us  immunity  from 
temptation.  And  the  richer  that  experience 
grows  the  more  subtle  and  sinister  become 
the  enticements  to  evil. 

For  Thine  is  the  Kingdom,  the  Power, 
and  the  glory,  for  ever.  Amen. 

These  closing  words  of  the  great  prayer 
are  not  given  in  St.  Luke’s  Gospel,  and 
many  biblical  scholars  believe  that  they 
crept  into  the  text  some  time  in  the  second 
century,  or  even  later.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
they  form  a  consistent  and  splendid  con¬ 
clusion  to  this  noblest  of  supplications.  If 
they  are  an  addition  from  some  Eastern 
liturgy,  they  show  how  completely  the  early 
Church  caught  the  largest  and  fullest  pur¬ 
pose  of  the  prayer,  felt  the  universal  heart- 
throb.  What  could  be  a  more  fitting  close 
that  this  Doxology  in  which  “the  Kingdom, 
the  power  and  the  glory”  are  offered  to  God 
as  the  triple  crown  by  those  whom  “the 
first-born  among  many  brethren”  taught  to 
pray? 


Form  number  21S5. 


